How do I find topics I'm interested in?

Finding specific questions that interest you can be accomplished a few different ways.

Browse by tag

Every question asked on our site is tagged with the sub-topics that describe it. Each of these tags has its own page that contains a tag wiki and a list of questions with that tag. To find questions about a topic of the site, visit the Tags page and either browse through popular tags or search for a specific one.

Clicking a tag – from anywhere on the site, whether it's from the tag page, or from tags below a question – will show you a list of all questions in that tag and a tag wiki that describes what the tag is and how it is used on this site. You can then sort by unanswered questions, most highly voted questions in that tag, or the newest questions asked with that tag, among others.

If you'd like to be notified of new activity within a certain tag, you can subscribe via email or RSS by hovering over the tag and selecting the method you prefer:

Search tags

If you're looking for questions about multiple topics, you can also search by tags. Our site search recognizes tags enclosed in brackets (like this: [tag]), as well as the search operators AND and OR. The default operator is AND – i.e., searching for "[tag1] [tag2]" returns posts tagged with both. To search for questions marked with either tag, insert an OR into your search (e.g., "[tag1] or [tag2]"). For more tips, visit the search page and click on "advanced tips".

Add favorite and ignored tags

Another way to filter out questions you're not interested in and focus on the ones you do care about is to add favorite and ignored tags to your account.

Favorite tags are meant to call out questions that are important or interesting to you. Any question tagged with one of your favorite tags will be highlighted on the homepage and questions lists.

Ignored tags downplay subjects you are not as interested in. Questions with these tags are faded on the homepage and questions list, but are still visible. If you want to completely hide questions with containing your ignored tags, you may checking the "Hide Ignored Tags" box in the "prefs" tab of your profile.

To designate tags as favorite or ignored, click the "add a favorite tag" or "add an ignored tag" link on the right sidebar of the homepage, or in the "prefs" tab of your user profile.

You can also toggle a tag between normal, favorite, or ignored by mousing over the tag and clicking the star icon.